1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus such as an ink jet printer or the like, and a maintenance method of the liquid ejecting apparatus.
2. Related Art
In the related art, as an example of a liquid ejecting apparatus, an ink jet printer which performs printing by ejecting an ink (liquid medium) supplied from an ink tank (liquid supply source) onto a medium from an ink jet head (liquid ejecting unit) is known. In the printers, a printer including a damper (pressure adjustment mechanism) for adjusting a pressure of an ink to be supplied to the ink jet head is included (for example, refer to JP-A-2009-178889).
The damper includes an ink path (communication path) which brings a tank-side liquid chamber (liquid inflow portion) and a head-side chamber (liquid storage unit) into communication with each other and a valve (opening/closing valve) which opens and closes the ink path. The valve is configured to open the valve according to a pressure in a pressure variable chamber in which the head-side chamber and a flexible film (diaphragm unit) are formed at a distance. That is, the valve of the ink path is open when the pressure in the tank-side liquid chamber increases to a predetermined value or more than the pressure in the pressure variable chamber.
For example, in a case of performing so-called pressure cleaning in which an ink is supplied under the pressure from the ink tank into the ink jet head and is discharged from the nozzle, it is required to open the valve of the damper, forcibly. That is, in a case of performing pressure cleaning, it is required to maintain a valve-open state that the pressure is continuously applied into a pressure variable chamber.
In the above-described printer, when performing the pressure cleaning, since the volume of the head-side chamber becomes greater in accordance with the open vale after the pressure cleaning, there is a problem in that an ink, which is attached around a nozzle opening in an ink jet head, is absorbed in the nozzle with foreign matters or bubbles.
This problem is not limited to the ink jet printer which performs printing by ejecting an ink from a nozzle and also applies to a liquid ejecting apparatus including a pressure adjustment mechanism adjusting the pressure of the liquid.